If ever there was a poster boy for the term “useful idiot,” AT&T’s necktie-eschewing, open-collared Joe Cool of Big Business, John Stankey, would be right up there with Curly Howard.
Under his leadership, AT&T continues to sink slowly under the huge debt load incurred by the acquisition of both Time Warner and DirecTV.
But far more problematic for today’s AT&T, the combined life product of Alexander Graham Bell, Jack Warner, Henry Luce, and Ted Turner, is Stankey’s abject loss of control over his diminutive subordinate, CNN president Jeff Zucker.
In light of the recent Project Veritas release of months’ worth of Zucker’s virulent, anti-government editorial directives, either Stankey is asleep at the wheel for not firing Zucker on the spot, or his company, AT&T, is part and parcel of sedition against the United States.
Given that sedition is defined as inciting people to rebel against the authority of the state, how else could Zucker’s actions and Stankey’s inactions be characterized?
Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe had obtained the recordings by cleverly infiltrating the daily CNN-wide morning teleconference . . . for a couple of months!
In doing so, he caught Zucker, former NBC page and now self-styled “objective newsman,” purposely and purposefully directing his staff away from any on-air mention of positive achievement by the current administration, and steering the staffers toward influencing viewers to perceive the administration as sinister.
When O’Keefe jumped in and confronted Zucker during the last of those calls, Zucker immediately demonstrated his most salient trait: cowardice.
He immediately tap danced away from the question, spewing a meaningless word salad and beating a hasty retreat.
Which is the way men with a Napoleon complex behave when they don’t expect to be challenged.
“Mother” Zucker did the same thing last year, when I personally took him to task over his destruction of the legitimate news network that so many of us gave so much to build: he froze, stammered something about his public affairs people, and looked for the exit. No balls, no guts, just a sub-caliber weasel deft at legerdemain.
Given that Zucker, in person, is reminiscent of the size, shape, and reflectivity of a chrome-plated phallic hood ornament on a ’48 Pontiac, it is no wonder that he is so easily intimidated in the face of the truth.
With that kind of malignant personality, it’s pretty easy to see why the “dwarf king” uses CNN to launch a daily, personal kamikaze assault on the Bad Orange Man, a gutsy American who outclasses the news dwarf by eight inches or so.
Meanwhile, Clueless-in-Dallas-Stankey struggles to keep AT&T afloat, while his subordinate seems to be busy plotting sedition against the government of the United States. One wonders if AT&T stockholders are really happy about that.
Given that sedition is not AT&T’s style, perhaps Stankey should jettison the whole of CNN to the highest bidder to avoid the inevitable stockholder backlash over Zucker’s actions . . . and help pay off AT&T’s huge debt.